I never thought I’d feel nostalgic for the Vietnam War, but Tom Cipullo’s opera “Glory Denied,” about the longest-held prisoner in that old conflict, Jim Thompson, is that potent. Berkshire Opera Festival brought Thompson’s story to gripping life Thursday night (the second production was Saturday afternoon) through the gift of socially distanced staging. The isolation of the pandemic turns out to be a perfect metaphor for the story of this soldier confined for nine years, who returns to find the home he knew is gone.
Under the direction of Sarah Meyers and scenic designer Cameron Anderson, tenor John Riesen, playing the young Jim, is confined to a cramped prison cell in one pod. Soprano Maria Valdes, as his young wife Alyce, rocks in a chair in a second. The old Alyce, beautifully sung by soprano Caroline Worra, paces a tiny apartment in the third; and in the fourth pod, baritone Daniel Belcher walks away with the show as old Jim in his BarcaLounger, accompanied only by his uniform and bottles of booze.
Thompson’s story, as set forth in a book by Tom Philpott, was a natural for the operatic treatment. It is an ancient dramatic tale — the soldier, long absent in the war, comes home to find that his wife has given him up and made a life with another man in another place. In the lead aria in the piece, a brilliant kind of catalogue aria (“Teflon cookware, men with long hair, bucket seats, wives who cheat”), old Jim recites the changes in his life and his America. Instead of conventional storytelling, Philpott used statements from life — interviews, letters — which Cipullo translated into a uniquely realistic libretto for this gifted cast. Whether talking to each other across time and memory or in real time encounters, the oral history worked beautifully to convey their experiences in authentic-sounding conversations.
Although Belcher got the show-stopping aria, each one of the singing actors served the material to great effect, creating four unforgettable portraits of the two human beings caught up in a world of war and social change. The two sopranos achieved the heavy lift of making the unfaithful Alyce understandable and sympathetic, giving the opera the balance that such a conflict of claims and needs deserved. The nine-piece orchestra, led by Assistant Conductor Geoffrey Larson, rendered Cipullo’s lyrical score beautifully, aided no doubt by the excellent acoustics of the Daniel Arts Center at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.
Composer Cipullo, in the audience opening night, must have been as pleased as were his fellow opera lovers at this promising opening of the Berkshire Opera Festival season.
Berkshire Opera Festival’s season continues with a free concert Wednesday, Aug. 11 at The Mount in Lenox, and a fully staged “Falstaff” running August 21, 24, and 27 at The Mahaiwe in Great Barrington.
